evidently an intermediary influence, namely, the Phoenicians, to whom are due the imported objects which the Cypriotes copied. It must also be remembered that Assyrian sculptures are nearly always in bas-relief, while those from Cyprus are in the round. To this fact is probably due a common feature of Cypriote statues, namely, that the figures have a thin and slab-like appearance, as if they had been meant for placing against walls. An unavoidable result of this is a deliberate misrepresentation of the human body" (H. B. Walters in Architectural Review, January 1899). With regard to the coiffure and head-dresses, the turbans (e.g. in Nos. 6 and 7) are interesting. Herodotus tells us (vii. 89) that "the Cyprian kings had their heads wound round with turbans, and the rest had tunics, but in other respects they were like the Hellenes." The A greater approach to naturalness is visible in the next group of heads, of which Nos. 28 and 29 may be taken as typical examples. Characteristic of the Cypriote type are a great prominence and sharpness of nose, a high skull, narrow head, cheek-bones highly marked, and a mild, benignant expression of countenance. There is also in the Cypriote style "an utter absence of elegance and nobility, of delicacy or firmness—in short, no idealism or striving after effect. Oriental dress and coiffure, the elaborate jewellery and general softness and effeminacy, are due to the Oriental manners and habits which have always characterised the Cypriotes even in the times of the strongest Western influence" (Walters). The kings of Cyprus affected, we are told, the luxury and ceremony of Oriental princes. Of one of them, the king of NeoPaphos, it is recorded that he liked to cool himself by the hovering of doves. He was anointed with fragrant oil to attract them, and when they flew near, attendants were at hand to ward them off (Athen. vi. 257). The sharp Cypriote nose is very conspicuous in all the heads. Many have the appearance of being portraits. Others may be identified as intended for heads of Hercules; of these No. 27 has some dignity, No. 17 wears an almost comic leer. Among the draped Aphroditès, No. 205 (from the Castellani collection) is not unpleasing. In others the goadess wears a diadem or other ornament (e.g. 154). Sometimes the Egyptian style continues (No. 211). In the full-length statuettes of Artemis and other divinities the Greek style is noticeable; some of these (e.g. No. 182) show considerable traces of colour. Passing to the wall-cases on the other side of the room, devoted to later Cyprian sculpture (about 500-150 B.C.), we find occasionally heads from which the archaic manner has disappeared. See, for instance, the charming head of a youth, probably Eros (No. 319), and Nos. 326, 328, 330. The Cypriote nose is, however, still with us. Some of the figures (Nos. 248, 279) are draped in an Egyptian royal tunic. Gradually we find ourselves among works of the Greek period. No. 39 is interesting as showing the distance we have travelled in artistic development. This head, which looks like a portrait, somewhat recalls a much earlier work on the other side of the room (No. 29), but it is much more natural. The expression is less stiff and the eyes have more life. In archaic sculpture, as Sir Charles Newton observed, "the eye appears rather as if seen through a slit in the skin than as if set within the guard of highly sensitive and mobile lids. The same want of knowledge which in the seated figures from Branchidæ has failed to disconnect the bodies from the chairs has in the treatment of the eye been unable to express its free movement and to detach it from the lids" (Portfolio, 1874, p. 84). A youthful male head (No. 42) is among the best of the Cypriote sculptures; it almost suggests the grand style of the Mausoleum sculptures. Another head (No. 43) has the air of a good portrait. No. 37 is thoroughly Greek. Among votive statues and sepulchral monuments we may notice the statue of a young man wearing a tunic with a mantle over it and holding a sacrificial band in his right hand (from Dali). A stelè from Larnaca was set up, about 250 B.C., by Arish in honour of his father, Parsi, and his mother, Shemzabal. The inscription is in Phoenician; a Greek one, probably to the same effect, was effaced in ancient days. Another stelè, with an inscription in Greek and Phœnician, is in memory of Artemidorus, son of Helidorus of Sidon: this was found at Athens (Boeck's C.I.G. No. 894). A basrelief, in hard stone, of a naked archer, has an inscription in Cypriote letters: this was found near a village called Salamiou, about 15 miles from Paphos (Trans. Soc. Bib. Arch. i. 117). At Tremitusa, near Golgoi, was found a stelè which, though not in a particularly good style of sculpture, shows some feeling. It appears to represent two young men at the grave of their mother, who holds one of them by the arm. One votive statue is of a poetess playing the lyre; among statuettes a flute-player is often seen. Cyprus, we may remember, was celebrated as "the island made glad with dances" (Claudian). It will not escape notice that among the sculptures of the later period many archaic figures are to be found- -some with the fixed "Æginetan" smile, others in the old stiff attitudes. In the temples of Cyprus every shrine seems to have been filled with a crowd of votive statues, and in statues made for this purpose the traditional pose, the archaic manner, were often intentionally preserved in much later times in accordance with religious tradition. Retracing our steps, we now enter the first of the series of CHAPTER XVI GREEK VASES-INTRODUCTORY A "The other day I went to the British Museum. The Greek sculpture and vases impressed me more profoundly than ever: the designs are so exquisite, the grace so unfailing, the touch so fine that I know no school of fine art equal to what is shown here. hundred nameless potters are better than the best men of the Renaissance. We justly praise Flaxman, but Athens or Corinth had each a whole crowd of working men, who probably did not reckon as artists at all, to rival him" (F. T. PALGRAVE'S Journals). "A feigned, fictitious, artificial, supernatural, put-together-out-ofone's-head thing. All this Fiction must be, to begin with. The best type of it being the most practically fictile-a Greek vase. A thing which has two sides to be seen, two handles to be carried by, and a bottom to stand on, and a top to be poured out of, this every right fiction is, whatever else it may be. Planned rigorously, rounded smoothly, balanced symmetrically, handled handily, lipped softly for pouring out oil and wine. Painted daintily at ་ last with images of eternal things: For ever shalt thou love, and she be fair" (RUSKIN, Fiction Fair and Foul). THE collection of Greek vases, admirably arranged in four spacious rooms, is among the most interesting departments of the British Museum. Though weak in some directions, especially in Etruscan vases, the collection is on the whole the most completely representative in the world. The study of such a collection affords an inexhaustible mine of interest, which is by no means to be confined to the scholar and the archæologist. This pottery of the Greeks appeals from many points of view to popular interest. Yet a visitor, previously unacquainted with the subject, who should content himself 1 Vases have also a scientific interest in connection with terrestrial magnetism. See a reference in Nature (March 4, 1897) to Dr. G. Folgheraiter's observations on the magnetisation of ancient vases. with a hasty and superficial inspection of the Vase Rooms, would probably think that such an enthusiastic appreciation as is contained in the passage from Palgrave's Journals was exaggerated, if not altogether unintelligible. "The prize Dead Greece vouchsafes to living eyes" is not to be had without some effort. The craftsmen who shaped and painted these vases had a language of their own, with conventions and abbreviations and limitations which the spectator must learn to understand before he can read the pictures with sympathetic pleasure. At first sight these slight and often careless outlines may appear hardly worthy of attention. We must bear in mind, as Sir Charles Newton bids us, "the peculiar conditions under which the vase-painter worked: the surface on which he had to paint was generally either convex or concave, rarely flat; he was limited to the employment of very few colours ; his composition was bounded by the form of the vase itself; the material with which he had to deal was not adequate to the proper representation of chiaroscuro." Again, the vasepainters, even in the periods and schools of greatest skill, used a kind of graphic shorthand. Do they want to tell us that we are looking at a building? They give us only a single column. We have to supply the rest. Or, we see a branch. as the notice in a child's drawing, "N.B. This is out-of-doors." Even in the figures we have, in the earlier vases, to interpret them by remembering certain fixed conventions. If the flesh be white, it is a woman; if black, a man. Women are given almond-shaped eyes; men have round pupils. The similarity of the dress of men and women made some such method of It serves drawing distinctions the more necessary. Quarrel with these conventions, refuse to accept them in the spirit in which they are meant, and to the end of the story nothing will be seen in the vases but quaintness and absurdity. Quaint indeed they are, but with a captivating quaintness. Once accept the conventions and limitations, and the more the vases are studied, the fuller they will seem of interest. In the first place, they are interesting from an artistic point of view. In design and fabric the better vases show a happy adaptation to the end for which they were severally made. The shapes of the vases-especially of the amphora, the hydria, the kylix, and the lekythos-are in themselves exceedingly graceful and have been widely imitated for purposes of use or ornament in all succeeding ages. The Greeks, says |